


skies so riddled, we won't see the stars

by enrai (tookumade)



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: (sort of), Astronomy, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21705259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tookumade/pseuds/enrai
Summary: "Do you know about the other stars of Orion?”Lio does. He remembers the rare nights of peace, when Freeze Force weren’t hunting him and the other Burnish. He remembers the times spent in the desert, when it’s biting cold at night and they’re huddled in blankets so as to not draw attention with their bright Burnish fire, and it’s dark enough that they can't see much around them. He remembers looking upwards at the clear skies instead, and seeing the sea of stars above them, the milky way, the moon. He remembers the red of Mars, and fellow Burnish joining him and pointing out Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. He has learnt Canis Major, Ursa Major, Pegasus, Aquila, Cygnus, the twelve zodiacs. He has learnt the stars of Orion.“Tell me about them,” he says. Galo points to the sky again.Lio, Galo, and stargazing.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 6
Kudos: 176





	skies so riddled, we won't see the stars

**Author's Note:**

> I miss this movie so much ( >皿<)

“Hi, Lio,” says Lucia when he returns to the FDPP late one night. She’s typing away at her computer and not looking at him. “Good work today. Galo’s on the rooftop. There are three jackets on the table, so take them all, because it’s cold up there. The dark blue one is Galo’s; I pinched it from his locker so you can use it as a pillow. There’s a torch, too.”

Lio stares at the small mountain of jackets with a yellow-and-black torch lying on top of it.

“Pillow? What’s this for?” he says. 

“You’re welcome,” says Lucia distractedly. “I’ll send one of my guys to wake you up in about two hours, in case you fall asleep.”

“Huh? But it’s… it’s time to sleep _now_ … and why did you think I was looking for him?”

“No problem, have fun,” says Lucia, still typing. She’s not listening. Apprehensively, Lio scoops the jackets into his arms, takes the torch, and starts making his way upstairs. He should probably be saying _no_ to all this instead, but he’s also suddenly curious.

Up on the rooftop, it’s chilly, but only slightly breezy. He finds Galo, wearing a puffy jacket and lying on the concrete with his hands folded over his stomach, his knees bent, fingers drumming along to a rhythm only he can hear, and foot tapping in time. Galo turns his head towards him when Lio opens the door leading out of the stairwell, and he grins.

“Hey!” says Galo. “Good work today.”

“Hey, yourself,” says Lio with a little smile, walking over to him. He can see Galo squinting uncomfortably in the bright torch light, so he switches it off. It’s dark, of course, but the lights from the surrounding buildings and street lights are bright enough that he can see Galo without too much trouble.

“I, uh, have your jacket. The big navy one?”

“Oh, okay. I don’t need it, but you can use it. Are you warm enough?”

“I think so… what are you doing up here, anyway?” 

“Stargazing! The sky’s clear tonight.”

“Star—” Lio stares at him, and then looks up. “Oh.”

“Yup!” Galo pats the space beside him. “Come watch with me.”

It is then that Lio notices that Galo has his Burning Rescue jacket rolled up and tucked under his head as a makeshift pillow. _Ohh_ , that explained it. He sets the torch on the ground, folds his (Galo’s) jacket up too, and lies down next to him. The ground is hard and uncomfortable, as can be expected of concrete, but Lio has had his share of sleeping on uncomfortable ground whilst on the run. At least here, he has a pillow and thick jackets as a buffer. 

“So, which stars are you looking at?” says Lio, folding his arms over his chest.

“Well, I only know one constellation, so…” Galo points. Lio’s gaze follows his hand.

“Orion’s belt,” he says after a moment.

“Yup! The easiest,” says Galo. “But it’s special. It’s Burning Rescue Squad 3’s constellation: Orion.”

Lio gives him a bemused smile. “Officially, or…?”

“Nah, not officially… but, do you remember my original matoi? The one with the—”

“—the white ribbons and the broken handle, that you keep waving in my face before you launch into a history of Japanese fire-fighting?”

Galo looks delighted. “You _do_ remember!”

“You did it _again_ just last weekend.”

“ _Anyway_. The kanji on my matoi is…” Galo writes it out against the sky. “A formal way of writing the character for ‘three’. It’s read as ’ _san_ ’. But it can also be read as ’ _shin_ ’, and in Chinese astronomy, ‘ _shin_ ’ is—”

“Orion,” Lio finishes quietly. They exchange glances, and Galo grins at him, but it’s softer, _fonder_ this time.

“Orion,” he echoes. “I mean, there’s cultural differences of course. They’re different constellations—Orion is Orion, and _shin_ is _shin_. But they overlap, so unofficially, I’ve made it our Squad 3 constellation! Do you know about the other stars of Orion?”

Lio does. He remembers the rare nights of peace, when Freeze Force weren’t hunting him and the other Burnish. He remembers the times spent in the desert, when it’s biting cold at night and they’re huddled in blankets so as to not draw attention with their bright Burnish fire, and it’s dark enough that they can’t see much around them. He remembers looking upwards at the clear skies instead, and seeing the sea of stars above them, the milky way, the moon. He remembers the red of Mars, and fellow Burnish joining him and pointing out Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. He has learnt Canis Major, Ursa Major, Pegasus, Aquila, Cygnus, the twelve zodiacs. He has learnt the stars of Orion.

“Tell me about them,” he says. Galo points to the sky again.

“Those three stars are Orion’s belt, but see those four bright ones, surrounding them like a sort of rectangle? They’re all part of Orion, too. They’re his shoulders and knees—and they’re the other stars that make up _shin!_ And you can’t see them right now, but there’s another bunch of stars that form Orion’s shield, and his arm and sword…” He pouts for a moment, dejected. “There’s too much light pollution. I wish you could see them.”

With a little swoop in his stomach, Lio suddenly realises that he’s not watching the stars; he’s watching Galo. Hastily, he looks away.

“Right,” he says, feeling a heat in his cheeks that he’s glad Galo can’t see in the night. “I never thought you’d be an astronomy enthusiast, too.”

“I’m not. Not really, anyway—I only know Orion. I just wish we could see the other stars. I don’t see them that often when I’m up here, but when I can, it’s really cool!”

That’s Promepolis: bright, bustling, and technologically advanced, but with all the light pollution, Lio’s surprised they can see any part of Orion at all.

He thinks about clear skies and a sea of stars. He thinks about the rare nights of peace.

“We should go to the desert at night sometime,” Lio says. He can feel rather than see Galo turn to look at him. “Or, somewhere that’s not so bright. We can see a lot more stars away from the cities… when the sky’s clear, you’ll be able to see all of Orion in the winter. I can point out some other constellations, too.”

Galo doesn’t answer for a while, and when Lio finally looks at him, he sees that Galo is smiling back at him. Lio feels another swoop in his stomach, wilder this time. Had he looked like that, watching Galo instead of watching the stars?

The smile on Galo’s face disappears suddenly. “Wait!” he says accusingly. “So you _do_ know the other stars of Orion?!”

Lio laughs. “I never said I didn’t,” he says. “I just wanted you to tell me about them.”

“ _Haaa_ , jerk! I got all excited, too!”

“Nothing wrong with that. I liked hearing yo—” Lio stops, feels another burst of heat in his cheeks, avoids meeting Galo’s eyes. “I like hearing about it. Orion, I mean.”

Galo makes a sulky grunting noise that Lio knows he doesn’t really mean. “You gotta teach me about one of the other constellations, then! To make up for it.”

“Whaaat?” 

“You already said you’d point out other constellations to me, so you might as well start now.”

“ _Ugh_ , all right, all right…” says Lio with a groan, and he knows that Galo knows he doesn’t mean that, either. He points to the left of Orion. “See that bright star, down there? That’s Sirius, and it’s part of the Canis Major constellation. And that other bright star above it… uh, I think it’s that one, anyway—”

“Wait, which one?”

“That one.”

“That one?” Galo points, and—this is stupid, they’re too far away from each other like this—

“No, _that_ one!” Without really thinking, Lio slides over so he’s smushed right against Galo’s shoulder, grabs his hand, and repositions it. “That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.” He points Galo’s finger a little higher. “And that one above it, that’s… what was the name… Pro-something… Procyron? Procyon, maybe. It’s part of Canis Minor. Canis Major and Canis Minor both represent Orion’s hunting dogs.”

“ _Ohh!_ ” Galo breathes. “Oh, that is so cool!”

Lio lets go of his hand and reaches to pull his (Galo’s) jacket-pillow back under his head. “If I remember right, Canis Minor only has one other star, but Canis Major has a bunch of others. I’ll point them out next time.”

“Yeah, okay!” says Galo, and he looks so excited, how could Lio promise otherwise? He can’t help but smile, feeling just so, so fond.

“Isn’t it a bit ironic, a firefighter enjoying stargazing?” Lio teases. “You know, stars being flaming balls of gas and all.”

“Ha! My soul burns hotter than stars!”

Lio gives a huff of laughter. He had seen enough—been around Galo enough—to know this. Saving the world with him had been enough to know it. “I don’t doubt that,” he says. “But, still…”

“Well, I use the time to… reflect, I guess. I think about my day, and what I did good and not-so-great, and what I’ve learnt from past rescue missions. It’s peaceful up here, so it’s a good time to think.”

Lio raises his eyebrows. “Huh. That’s…” Deep? Unexpected? Surprisingly insightful. From _Galo?_ “Huh.”

Galo makes a humming sound and stretches his legs out comfortably. “I’m a rescuer. I need to think about what works and doesn’t work in my job. The better I am at it, the more I can do! And, I mean, I love it, but it _is_ a high-stress job, and Remi used to tell me I needed to do something calm sometimes… you know, to balance it out. I tried meditating for a while, but I kept falling asleep really quickly. But stargazing works for me, so I use this instead. Sometimes I still fall asleep, but it's actually not that often.”

Lio smiles. “I see.”

“Speaking of falling asleep, shouldn’t you be getting some rest? You’ve been out all day.”

“Mm… I was going to, but then Lucia kind of just… sent me up here.” It’s taken him long enough, but Lio finally realises that he’s still pressed up against Galo’s side. 

“Did she say she’d come by to wake us up, just in case?”

“She, uh… said that she’d send ‘one of her guys’ up.”

“Oh, one of her alarm drones, then.”

“Her what?”

“It’s exactly as it says on the tin: Lucia’s alarm drones.”

“And that doesn’t worry you?”

“Nope, they’re very efficient and effective! Harmless, too. Except for that time when…” Galo trails off, pauses, and continues: “Anyway, they’re mostly harmless.”

“For the record, your definition of ‘harmless’ is usually _very_ different from other people’s.”

“But the question is: is it that different from yours?”

Lio looks at him. Right now, they’re close, the both of them—Lio would describe this as _within head-butting range_ —and he sees Galo watching him with a little grin that could only be described as _smug_ , like he _knows_ , he knows Lio, he knows that the two of them are more alike than people might think, he knows that Lio might protest just to keep up appearances, but they operate on a similar (or, rather, _not unsimilar_ ) wavelength. 

A small smile creeps across Lio’s face, and he doesn’t bother trying to fight it back.

“I guess we’ll see,” he says.

Maybe it shouldn’t be as comfortable as it is, lying here on the concrete in the cold, but Galo radiates warmth even through all their layers of jackets, and Lio has no desire to move away. Galo raises his free arm that Lio’s not pressed against and points it towards the sky again, tracing lines amongst the stars that only he can see. Lio watches him, eyelids starting to feel heavy with sleepiness.

“You said Sirius is from Canis Major, right?”

“Mm.”

“And Proclyon—”

“Procyon, I think.”

“Procyon is from… Canis Minor…” Galo drops his arm by his side. His voice is getting softer and softer. Lio closes his eyes.

“Mm-hm.” 

“Orion’s hunting dogs.”

“Orion’s…” Lio mumbles. He’s drifting off. “I’ll take you there, someday… see Orion…”

“I’d like that,” says Galo. Or maybe Lio had just imagined it. Maybe not. Either way, he’s falling asleep, and he’ll let Lucia’s alarm drone wake them up when the time comes. 

And someday soon, he’ll show Galo the clear, clear night sky. He’ll point out the red of Mars, the brightness of Venus, the twelve zodiacs, all the stars he knew of the hunting dogs.

And Galo will see all the stars of Orion.

**Author's Note:**

> 参  
>  _san_ \- the number three, used in documents  
>  _shin_ \- the "Three Stars" constellation in Chinese astronomy; its stars also form what you might know as Orion  
> (source: [Jisho.org](https://jisho.org/search/%E5%8F%82))
> 
> ≈☆
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/naffnuffnice)


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